Europe’s captive peoples

I was always sceptical about the European Union’s Eastern Partnership. It reeked of lazy Western pigeonholing. The six countries it covered are hugely different. Ukraine is more important than the others combined. Azerbaijan’s owner-rulers are so rich they can do what they like. Belarus is an autocracy – and like Armenia so dependent on Russia for security that room for manoeuvre is limited. (It might make sense to have a joint policy for small, cash-strapped and vulnerable Moldova and Georgia, based on promoting territorial integrity, energy independence and the rule-of-law. But it would hardly be a grand design.)

An even bigger flaw was that the Eastern Partnership assumed rulers and ruled had the same interests. This is clearly not the case. The elites in most of these countries are corrupt and self-interested. They rig elections, muzzle the media, intimidate their opponents and regard their time in office as licence to loot. We used to call these countries ‘captive nations’ because they were in thrall to the Soviet empire. Now they are captives of their own rulers.

Whatever lip-service these elites pay to European integration, they detest the political and economic competition it would mean. The people, however, would like it a lot. The enthusiasm for modernisation and openness is not universal or complete. Their views on gay marriage, or the rights and wrongs of Soviet history, may be sharply different from their counterparts in, say, Poland or the Baltic states. They see Europe’s flaws – austerity, corruption, prejudice, hypocrisy, weakness and potential instability – all too clearly.

But all that is relative. The Kremlin has failed colossally to win hearts and minds in its former empire. Instead people are pretty fed up with crime, corruption, censorship, economic sanctions, information-warfare and other examples of Russia’s applied soft power. For all the reservations about Europe, few see Putinism as an attractive model for their own future. Unfortunately, the rulers of countries like Azerbaijan, Belarus and Ukraine are far more scared of the Kremlin than of their voters.

This sad impasse is a bad basis for negotiating something like the Eastern Partnership, which requires elites to take difficult decisions for the long-term good of their countries. This model worked well in negotiating the accession agreements for the Baltic states and the Visegrád countries, where the rulers were hugely pro-European and just needed to know what template to follow.

It does not work well with an ex-Soviet jailbird like the Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. He is by all accounts dim as well as dodgy. But even he could see that the EU was in effect asking him to dismantle the system that kept him in power, and to accept a lot of short-term pain from Russian trade sanctions (he also, I hear, feared for his physical safety: his pro-European predecessor Viktor Yushchenko, after all, was poisoned).

As the Eastern Partnership dies in the flames of Vilnius, it may look hard to summon political enthusiasm inside the EU for future eastern-neighbourhood policies. Many senior people will feel they have wasted their time once and have no wish to repeat the mistake.

But they have no choice. These countries are not going away – and neither is Russia. The real value of the Eastern Partnership saga has been in educating European officials to the reality of Kremlin power on its doorstep. In all the captive nations, the main effort now should be on European integration for people (students, entrepreneurs, do-gooders, cultural folk). It should not centre on doing deals with their captors.

As for policy towards the Kremlin, Europe should lick its wounds and counter-attack hard. Start with Gazprom.